Setting Up DNS, Custom Domains, Senders, and Replies

This article covers everything involved in sending CRM emails from your own organization's domain: verifying DNS, adding senders, and setting Reply-to addresses.

Looking for the full CRM walkthrough? See the Comprehensive CRM Guide.

📬 Two ways to send

You can send CRM emails one of two ways:

Roundtable's shared domain — no setup required. Emails send from your-name@crm.civicroundtable.com and are ready as soon as your CRM is configured.
Your own verified domain — requires DNS setup, and sends from your organization's real email address. Custom “senders” can only be added to non-Roundtable verified domains.

✅ Verifying your domain

To send from your own domain, you need to add DNS records proving you own it.

Go to Settings → Email Senders → Add new domain.
1. The domain field is pre-filled based on your email address — for example, if you're logged in as emma@civicroundtable.com, your domain is civicroundtable.com.
Click Get DNS records and copy them exactly as shown.
Share the records with your IT team or DNS administrator to add to your DNS provider.
1. IT verification uses a DKIM (TXT) and a Return Path (CNAME) record
Wait 15 minutes to 24 hours for DNS propagation, then return to Email Senders and click Check verification.

Troubleshooting: If verification fails, allow up to 48 hours and confirm the records were entered exactly as given. Contact support@civicroundtable.com if it's still not verifying after 48 hours.

Subdomains vs. root domains

A root domain is your main website address (like yourorg.org), while a subdomain is a separate sub-section built on top of it (like messages.yourorg.org). Because of this distinction, verifying a subdomain only verifies that specific subdomain—it does not verify the root domain, and vice versa. If your IT team can only verify a subdomain, keep that in mind when choosing sender and Reply-to addresses (see below).

➕ Adding senders

Once a domain is verified, you can add specific "from" addresses on that domain as senders:

Go to Settings → Email Senders.
Under your verified domain, add a sender with a From email and From name — for example, from email: info@messages.yourorg.org, from name: "Your Org Communications."

✨Sender tips ✨

If no senders are added, CRM users whose email address domain matches the verified domain can send using the verified domain
Once a sender is added, any CRM user can send emails as that sender.
When multiple senders are added, the email composer's From field becomes a dropdown, allowing users to select from existing senders.

⏪ Setting a Reply-to address

By default, replies to emails sent via the CRM will come back to the sender. However, when sending an email, users can optionally select a different “reply-to” address. "No-reply"–style addresses (e.g. no-reply@, noreply@, do-not-reply@, donotreply@) are rejected. Email senders must allow replies to improve deliverability.

The allowable Reply-to addresses are restricted to protect your organization's data. A Reply-to address must match either the email address of an existing CRM user or the from address of a sender on a verified domain.

This restriction exists to prevent replies from being accidentally (or maliciously) routed to an address outside your org — for example, someone shouldn't be able to set a random third party's email as the Reply-to on your org's outgoing mail.

If the reply-to is configured on the "sender" configuration, it gets prefilled into the email composer.

⌨️ A common scenario

Your organization's IT team can verify messages.yourorg.org but not yourorg.org itself (this is common, as organizations often restrict what subdomains can be provisioned). You want:

Emails to send from info@messages.yourorg.org
Replies to route to info@yourorg.org

Steps:

Verify the domain messages.yourorg.org under Settings → Email Senders.
Add info@messages.yourorg.org as a sender on that verified domain.
Add info@yourorg.org as a CRM user (not as a sender — it's on an unverified root domain, so it can't be added there).
When composing or configuring your email, set the Reply-to to info@yourorg.org.

Still stuck? Contact support@civicroundtable.com.